Jessica Kairé

In a video that harks back to the aesthetics of TV cooking classes and do-it-yourself videos, Guatemalan artist Jessica Kairé teaches her viewers step-by-step how to make chakos, a weapon used in martial arts that is usually made of two wooden sticks joined at one end by a short metal chain or rope. However, Kairé’s chakos are made with two bananas and banana woven leaves. This video, entitled Así es la vida en el trópico (Chakos), reveals and humorously criticizes the need to create self-defense weapons in contexts such as Guatemala. In the face of the precariousness and the effects of US neo-imperialism, particularly of the United Fruit Company, the humorous appropriation of the banana as a weapon of self-defense, particularly for women, could not be more pertinent.